In
reading the material for the first post and in responding to the
Creswell (2007) quote the idea of post-modernism kept springing to
mind. Being a History teacher I encounter post-modernist historical
interpretations on a regular basis in the classroom. I find that
post-modernism in general (and in some approaches completely) looks
to rejects the notion of absolute truth. This rejection of absolute
truth springs in general from the experience of European
imperialism over the past several hundred years attempting to impose
the "truth" through colonialism/imperialism. This
rejection of a colonial past may or may not entirely be warranted,
but a tinge of relativism I find nips at the frayed edges of
post-modernism threatening to unravel an important approach to
uncovering knowledge.
The
ontological position as stated in the Creswell (2007) chart on page
17 finds that reality is subjective as viewed from the vantage point
of the observers. This view does have some merit I find, as current
understandings of quantum mechanics state that the act of observing
changes the nature of the observation and observer; one cannot ever
be a "impartial observer". However, if taken to the extreme
that all knowledge and reality is relative, then does anything
matter? Can there be any common understandings, fundamental laws?
I
think scientific advancement over the past several hundred years has
indeed shown that fundamental laws do exist and at the same time
reality isn't entirely understood by humans. What one has to be on
guard for is the path to Nihilism
cloaked as a rejection of imperialism and a fundamentalist adoption
of post-modern thought including qualitative research. While at the
same time I do find that not all knowledge can be understood through
empirical means employing quantitative research methods. An
example of a fallacy founded in too fundamental a belief in
quantitative research began more than half a century ago and continues
to dominate much of the discourse of societal change without many
participants in this debate's knowledge; machines will be our
salvation.
This
astounding belief was grounded in the strong quantitative research of
the 20th century in biology, computer science, math and continues to
drive the heart of the silicon revolution..unfortunately its simply
wrong. This startling claim was explored in great depth through a
three part documentary on the BBC entitled"All Watched Over by
Machines of Loving Grace" which aired this past May. Cybernetic
research in the1950's and 60's sprung from an assumption borrowed
from biology; ecosystems. This term refers to a systems' approach to
biology championed by Arthur Tansley in the 1930's that found
ecosystems attain a natural equilibrium between organisms and
environment and would thus modify inputs/outputs as self-regulating
agents to maintain a natural equilibrium state. Cybernetic pioneers
including scientists such as Norbert Wiener, Jay Forrester, Howard T.
and Eugene Odum, Stewart Brand and Buckminister Fuller championed a
vision of the future where machine ecosystems would behave as
stewards of human civilization through self-regulating principles of
ecosystems.
The
above mentioned scientists based the earliest computers and networks
on this premise, influencing the direction of software and hardware
development of the entire electronics industry since. This
steady-state concept of ecosystems was eventually disproven in the
late 1960's with the new experiments uncovering insights that dynamic
change was the norm in ecosystems. But the drive to create machines
that could replicate a perfect equilibrium was underway; heedless of
the failure that quantitative research brought with many prominent
scientists unwilling to adapt to a new paradigm.
Perhaps a bit more
curiously than the scientist's fundamentalist approach to quantitative
methodology are the followers of Ayn Rand's philosophy of
objectivism. Which adopted this cybernetic ecosystem concept in
the 1960's as well. Rand's philosophy in brief held that reality was
outside consciousness and through inductive and deductive logic one
comes to the moral conclusion that pursuit of one's rational
self-interest is the highest goal (Ayn Rand Institute, 2011). The
self-regulating machine ecosystem ideology was a perfect fit for
Rand's followers who held contempt for traditional political systems
that were founded on control of the individual for the benefit of the
collective.
To
elaborate a bit on one aspect of the societal impact of role the
machine ecosystem and the dangers of fundamentalist zeal is the
career of one of Rand's earliest and close followers, Alan Greenspan.
Greenspan was the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank from
1987-2006 (essentially the head banker in the United States).
Greenspan presided over deregulation of the American economy guided
by belief that computers would keep track of and account for the
market transactions conducted by individuals' guided by their
rational self-interest (Curtis, 2011). This process of deregulation
was ultimately discredited and Greenspan himself admitted such in
2008.
Overall, in
response to the Creswell quote I find it has an apologist tone to it
as found in the following part of the quote, "...represents a
legitimate mode of social and human science exploration, without
apology or comparisons" (Creswell, 2007, p. 2). The quote in my
opinion has the tone that qualitative research isn't legitimate, is
confined to the social/human sciences which isn't "respected"
and is often compared to quantitative research which may be superior.
In this response I've written about the dangers of fundamentalist
views of knowledge exploration, the validity of the recognition of
observer participation and bias and the fundamental limitation of
human knowledge acquisition which makes qualitative research a
valuable approach in knowledge acquisition. Human thought is more
than the sum of its parts; that which makes us human cannot be
capture in a number.
References
Ayn
Rand Institute (2011). Introducing Objectivism. Retrieved from
http://www.aynrand.org/site/PageServer?pagename=objectivism_intro
Carr,
E.H. (1961). What is History? London, Penguin Group.
Creswell,
John (2007). Qualitative
Inquiry and Research Design:Choosing Among Five Approaches. London,
Sage Publishing.
Curtis,
Adam (2011). All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace. [video
file] Retrieved from
